


Just Some (H)armless Cuddling

by Green_Sphynx



Series: (H)armless Cuddling [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Fluff and Humor, Hunk and Keith are confused friends, M/M, Pidge is a sneaky, Pining Lance (Voltron), Pining Shiro (Voltron), Requited Love, Shiro's arm deserves a character tag of its own in this fic, Sleepy Cuddles, Veronica is a protective sis, season 8/post season 8, they just have to realise they are first
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:14:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23789146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Green_Sphynx/pseuds/Green_Sphynx
Summary: Three times Shiro's arm gets caught wandering down the halls of the Atlas to cuddle with Lance at night, plus one time it didn't have to.
Relationships: Lance/Shiro (Voltron)
Series: (H)armless Cuddling [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1713943
Comments: 16
Kudos: 208





	Just Some (H)armless Cuddling

**Author's Note:**

> This piece was for ['Fall Into You - A Shance anthology'](https://talesofshance.tumblr.com/), the first zine I got the pleasure to write for and goodie, what a perfect first experience this was!  
> The amazing art in this work is done by [Seki](https://twitter.com/rustdustshuffle), please go go check out all the amazing art she has there if you don't follow her every post already!!

**1.**

Being dragged out into space to fight an intergalactic war when your species didn't even have solid proof of alien life yet kinda ensured that nothing could really, _truly_ surprise you anymore.

Giant sentient robot lions were what it all _started_ with, so there's no going downhill from there, not really.

And still, despite the ten thousand year old aliens looking like humans with elf ears, the alternate dimensions and his own alien mom, Keith was _still_ taken off guard by seeing Shiro's new arm floating down the hallway of the Atlas without the rest of Shiro anywhere in sight.

In the middle of the night.

Keith shot Hunk next to him a look to wordlessly ask 'are you seeing this?', but Hunk looked even more weirded out than Keith felt so this probably wasn't his exhausted mind making things up. He would've blamed the late night training session he had dragged Hunk into otherwise.

"Where's Shiro?" Hunk's voice was slightly pitched in disbelief.

"More importantly, where is his arm going without him?"

They shared a look, and nothing more needed to be said for them to hurry down the hallway to follow the arm where it drifted around the corner.

They were in the wing of their own sleeping quarters, having been heading to bed themselves, but the arm was not headed towards Shiro's room. Rather, it was headed _away_ from the captain's quarters. And yet it was moving slow and in a strangely uncoordinated way… like it was sleepwalking.

A sleepwalking arm.

Keith was pretty sure Shiro didn't sleepwalk before, but then again, he didn't have a detachable prosthetic arm before either.

"I had no idea it could move this far out of Shiro's reach," Hunk muttered, waving his hand behind the bright lit end of the prosthetic. "I didn't know it had sensors beyond what an actual arm has, but it must have _something_ more to know where it's going without Shiro here to control it."

"That, or it knows where it's going from memory," Keith mused, reaching out to put a hand in front of it.

The arm bumped against his hand and stopped, actually managed to look _befuddled_ like it wasn't just a robot arm, and then lowered slightly to brush under Keith's hand to keep going.

"So wherever it's going… it goes there a lot?" Hunk's eyebrows had slowly climbed up his forehead and by now he looked more confused than Keith had ever seen him about a piece of tech.

"But there's nothing in this direction for Shiro to go _'a lot'_ ," Keith brought in, but before they could continue their reasoning on the what or where, the arm made a sharp turn and pressed to the control panel of a bedroom door. The door opened soundlessly and the arm floated through into the dark room without missing a beat, leaving the two paladins gaping in the hallway as the door closed again.

"Did it just-?"

"Isn't that Lance's-"

"But _why_?"

They met each other's eyes, but Keith found as little explanation in Hunk's as Hunk no doubt did in his. This was a mystery and neither had the faintest clue on where to even _start_ with it.

"I'm going to bed," Keith finally stated flatly, hoping normalcy would make this whole thing disappear - if not from reality then at least from his mind.

"Yeah…" Hunk gave Lance's bedroom door a last confused glance. "We're… probably just seeing things…"

"Definitely." Keith agreed, before turning on his heel and marching down the hall to his own bedroom.

 _Definitely_ seeing things.

**2.**

Anyone who would have a younger sibling suddenly disappear without a trace would end up being overprotective of the remainder of their siblings, and even more ridiculously so of the lost sibling if they returned. It was only natural, and nobody should really be surprised.

Honestly, nobody blamed older siblings for being overprotective even without the unexpected and unexplained disappearance of one of them, so Veronica couldn't even feel remotely sorry for some slight infringements of privacy if it meant making sure Lance was safe and healthy.

Because yes, it was definitely a breach in privacy protocol when she abused her rank to override the security on Lance's quarters in the middle of the night while knowing he was asleep, barging in without so much as a knock or a warning. But how could she not, when she had just caught the closing of the door when she had turned the corner in the hallway, and _knowing_ it hadn't been Lance going through the door in a way that only mothers and older sisters knew.

 _Someone_ had entered Lance's room in the middle of the night, and she had seen it was dark in the room and she _knew_ Lance was asleep, she _felt_ it, so there was a stranger in there and her little brother, paladin of Voltron or not, was potentially in danger.

So yes, she absolutely broke all privacy rules and forced her way into her sleeping brother's bedroom while nobody but the small night watch was awake on the Atlas.

She swung a hand over the sensor by the door with no finesse to bathe the dark room in bright lights in an instant rather than letting it build up, another hand already halfway drawing a weapon from her belt to confront the intruder.

She had not been prepared for what she saw.

Lance bolted upright with a pretty unmanly squeak at the sudden lights - and she swore he used to sleep with a sleeping mask, so she hadn't actually expected him to even notice, but nightly alarms for Voltron must've changed that habit.

Thing was, Lance was the only one to get shocked by the lights switching on. The intruder could not be startled by the lights, for the lack of eyes or light sensors on it.

The intruder was their captain's prosthetic arm.

"Veronica? What the quiznak, sis, do you _mind_?"

"I was just… worried?" It came out like a question and clearly didn't satisfy Lance, so instead she vaguely gestured to the prosthetics arm that was now patting around on Lance's pillow - no, _searching_ where Lance's head been a moment ago.

Lance turned to follow where she pointed only to let out another one of those squeals that she would be teasing him about later, when the initial shock of this whole thing had worn off, and all but flung himself off the bed. He landed in a crumpled heap of sheets and limbs on the floor, flailing for just one second before coming to an abrupt halt, frozen as he stared at the arm on his pillow.

"…what the _quiznak_ …?"

As the two of them stared, the arm managed to pat its way down to the side of the bed, finding Lance's leg that was still halfway propped up the mattress, and clamped down lightly on his ankle. Lance merely blinked wide eyes at it when it started to trail up his legs, not looking alarmed whatsoever, and that was the main reason Veronica finally relaxed where she stood.

She watched a heavy shudder wracking through Lance's body at the ticklish feeling of an arm travelling up his body, but it made no move to stop and do anything untoward or dangerous, simply making its way up to Lance's head. Only there it stopped its searching movement, fingers tangling into Lance's hair comfortably like that was where the prosthetic belonged.

The detachable, metal arm of their captain was petting Lance's hair in the middle of the night, in Lance's bedroom, with their captain nowhere in sight.

"Is… this normal between you two?" Veronica finally questioned hesitantly, and Lance's head snapped around to face her so fast she feared he'd give himself a whiplash.

"No!" He cleared his throat to remove the panicked squeak, and gave her a quieter, more controlled 'no' again. "This is new… how did it _get_ here? Where's Shiro?"

"I didn't see the captain on my way in," Veronica provided. "Are you sure he didn't do this before? He had another prosthetic arm before, right?"

"That one was stuck to his body like a regular arm, and he slept way down the hall from me back in the Castle of Lions."

As puzzled as Lance looked, Veronica could _see_ him relaxing under the gentle scritches of the metal fingers on his scalp. His eyes were already drooping again, despite the shock he just had.

Lance must really trust the captain after all they went through, to be so entirely comfortable in the presence of just the man's arm while he was at his most vulnerable. It was almost like that time-

Veronica smiled, honestly trying not to smirk at her little brother when she came to the realisation of just why Lance was so happy to turn into a happy puddle of goo under the attention of Captain Shirogane's hand. It seemed like she had nothing to worry about here, aside from maybe how long it would take these two idiots to realise it themselves.

"Get back into bed before you fall asleep on the floor, Lance," she chastised mildly, hooking her hands under his armpits to heave him back onto the bed. The captain's prosthetic actually helped her lift him as soon as Lance moved, sliding under Lance's back to support him until he was back on the mattress. Veronica didn't need to cover her baby brother up with his sheets, because the arm was already on its way.

"Good night, Lance," she snickered on her way out. There was only a very sleepy mumble as a response as she turned off the lights and slipped back into the bright hallway.

Her captain was an _idiot_.

**3.**

Shiro was more than used to being rudely awoken by shrill alarms that had nothing to do with the time and everything to do with an emergency. Ever since the first time Allura set off the Castle's alarms to drum the paladins out of bed in a hurry he'd been quick and efficient about it, the noise giving enough of an adrenaline spike to have him fully awake and ready to lead in a matter of minutes.

Being the captain of the Atlas made it easier in that he no longer had to wrangle himself into his armour first, and his quarters being much closer to the bridge than his room in the Castle of Lions had ever been.

That said, it had been quite a while since the Atlas had been in any sort of space that gave them reasons for sudden alarms, and Shiro woke to this one feeling oddly disoriented and _wrong_. As if waking up on the floor next to the bed, or on a bed that was in the same place as always but higher or lower than normally.

Neither of those was the case, so he shook it off and gut up, sending his prosthetic arm across the room to grab his uniform pants-

-only to have his hand knock into something covered by soft hair.

Shiro was up on his feet in the blink of an eye, looking around in alarm for whose head he just hit. A quick glance showed that there had been nobody else in his bed, nor on his couch, nor anywhere else in the room.

In fact, neither was _his arm_.

He could still feel his arm perfectly, as well as the cushioned surface it was laying on and the slight movement of it. He could feel his arm was far away and vaguely to his right, but not _where_ it really was.

"What in the…" Shiro slowly flexed his fingers, noting that everything was in working condition even if he had no idea where it was. Next he tried to pull his arm back - which worked for a bit, until the back of his hand collided with a wall.

 _He had no time for this_.

He tried following the wall, and he did find a door after a few moments, but not the control panel to open it. Shiro was about ready to give up on the arm altogether - he would really have to question Allura about whether it was normal for his arm to wander off during the night - and get dressed without it, but then he felt a new touch.

Hands, two of them, carefully wrapping around his arm and pulling him away from where he was feeling up the wall. There was a rush of air and then movement, slight shocks of hurried steps.

Whoever found his arm was carrying it, and Shiro could only assume they were bringing his arm to him as fast as they could. Nobody on the Atlas would fail to recognise their captain's prosthetic arm, nor underestimate the importance of it to their captain while the alarms were still blaring.

Shiro quickly shimmied into his pants and shirt, but only got one button of his uniform jacket done before there was a hurried knock at the door. He might have hesitated opening the door looking as dishevelled as he did, but the subordinate on the other side was already bringing him _his arm_ so there was little face to be lost by appearing like this.

The heat on his cheeks said otherwise, however, when he found it was Lance on the other side of the door, holding out his arm to him.

Lance looked a little flustered himself, but otherwise not half as surprised or confused as he probably should when bringing Shiro his arm.

"Sorry I took so long getting it to you, I didn't realise it was in my room again until I tried to leave and found it against the door."

" _Again_?" Shiro blinked wide confused eyes, trying to push down the inexplicable anxious feeling in his stomach.

Before Lance could answer though, someone was running down the hallway calling for the captain, and Shiro sharply remembered there was _an alarm going off_ and he was the captain of this ship, supposed to already be on the bridge right now.

He returned his arm to his side and quickly dismissed Lance with a low 'thank you', rushing down the hall to the bridge while doing up the remainder of his uniform buttons. Questions would have to be asked later.

**+1**

"Captain of this ship or not, Shiro, I'm not going to keep hiding security logs for you forever. When are you going to stop with the midnight sneaking and just face the issue like a man?"

Lance wasn't entirely sure if he was supposed to hear this conversation- no wait, scratch that, he absolutely was. Pidge knew perfectly well he was laying on the couch and awake, even if he was hidden from their line of sight by the couch's back. The question was whether Shiro knew, and if this conversation was going to get so personal he'd regret Lance hearing it.

But Lance had been halfway dozing, and it took him a moment too long to actually get his limbs to start moving, and by the time he shifted Shiro had long carried on the conversation, making it too awkward for Lance to announce his presence anymore.

"What do you mean, 'hiding security logs'? Why are you hiding security logs, Pidge?"

Pidge made a fake disinterested noise before answering. "Oh, I just figured you didn't want the whole security crew over the fact that your prosthetic arm goes to Lance's room every night. Gossip spreads fast on a ship this size."

"It does _what_?"

Lance quietly settled back on the couch, folding his hands on his chest to blink up at the ceiling pensively. This was news to him too - although… not _entirely_ new. There was that time Vero had burst into his room that he wasn't sure whether he had dreamt the morning after, but there was definitely the thing with Shiro's arm being plastered against his door trying to find a way out when those alarms went off a few quintants back. Lance wasn't exactly surprised to hear that it was a more common occurrence.

What did surprise him - only mildly though - was that it didn't bother him at all. It actually might explain why he had slept so well the past phoeb, instead of getting woken by nightmares every other night. It also might explain why his hair was such a mess when he woke up nowadays.

He was vaguely aware that he probably _should_ feel bothered by someone sneaking into his room - or part of someone sneaking into his room - without his knowledge every night, even if it was a close friend like Shiro. Or you know, his personal hero since he came to the Garrison, his leader, a beautiful sculpted piece of man that solidified Lance's bi awakening, the nicest person he _ever_ knew, and maybe the main subject of various dreams, and - _oh_.

 _Oh_.

Lance blinked slowly, the conversation with Pidge nagging Shiro over his arm's night activities completely tuned out.

All this time, and Lance never realised he was actually in love with Shiro. It explained _so much_ though, and even consciously thinking 'I love Shiro' felt _right_ , rather than uncomfortable or weird. It felt warm and like a relief he was finally thinking it, finally knowing what had been up all this time.

He heard the faint sound of the door to the lounge opening and closing, and silence followed. Silence holding two breaths, Lance's and Shiro's.

_Pidge was such a sneaky little gremlin._

"So uhm," Lance cleared his throat awkwardly. "I hear your arm likes cuddling?"

Shiro made a slightly strangled noise, so Lance finally sat up on the couch, hooking an arm over the back rest to turn to Shiro. His captain had a hand covering his mouth and was pointedly looking away from Lance, but nothing could hide just how red his face was.

"…what a coincidence," Lance continued slowly, as if there hadn't just been the longest silence waiting for Shiro to say anything. "I happen to like cuddling as well."

Shiro's eyes shot up to Lance's face, and just the look he gave Lance made him certain. He really loved Shiro, and by the look of it - and the sound of Pidge's berating - that wasn't entirely one-sided.

"So… wanna go retire somewhere your arm won't be caught on security cams if it wants some cuddles?" Lance offered a somewhat tentative version of his usually confident grin, but he shouldn't have worried, Shiro all but interrupting him with a 'god, _yes'_ , and taking the few steps forward that would bring him to the couch. It was still the prosthetic arm that came around to take hold of Lance's arm, pausing there for a split second before slipping down to take his hand instead.

Lance was grinning so wide it made his cheeks hurt when Shiro dragged him off to the captain's quarters. It seemed like he owed the sneaky little gremlin one.


End file.
